Intimacy avoidance is a common challenge that affects many marriages. It often stems from an insecure attachment style developed in childhood, particularly an avoidant attachment style.1 For simplicity, this article will focus on men with avoidant attachment, as research has found this is more common, while women are more often anxiously attached.2 However, intimacy avoidance can affect people of all genders.
Attachment Styles and Relationships
Attachment theory provides a framework for understanding patterns of behavior in romantic relationships. The four main attachment styles are:3
- Secure: Positive view of self and others
- Anxious: Negative view of self, positive view of others
- Avoidant: Positive view of self, negative view of others
- Disorganized: Negative view of self and others
While we develop a primary attachment style in early childhood based on interactions with caregivers, most people are a mix of styles. An insecure-avoidant attachment in childhood often leads to avoidant behavior in adult relationships.
Causes of Avoidant Attachment
Avoidant attachment usually develops due to parenting characterized by emotional distance, rejection, humiliation or excessive teasing.4 The child learns to suppress their emotional needs and develops a negative view of depending on others.
As adults, avoidantly attached individuals deeply desire acceptance and intimacy but cope by minimizing their needs and detaching emotionally.5 Their self-protective instincts lead them to avoid closeness and vulnerability.
Challenges in Avoidant Marriages
Relationships with an avoidant partner can start intensely and passionately but become distant over time. The avoidant spouse may feel trapped, act distant, or nitpick their partner’s flaws.6 The non-avoidant partner often feels lonely, rejected, and confused by their spouse’s hot-and-cold behavior.
Avoidant individuals struggle to openly share feelings, commit, and tolerate the normal ups and downs of intimacy. They may feel a need to control the relationship to avoid rejection.7
Treatment Approaches
Individual Therapy
Individual therapy, especially cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), can help avoidant individuals recognize and change negative thought patterns driving their behavior. Mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches are also helpful for increasing comfort with emotions.8
Couples Counseling
Couples counseling can facilitate a better understanding of each partner’s attachment style, unmet needs, and emotional triggers. The therapist may address issues like depression, anxiety, or substance abuse that are compounding the avoidance.
Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) is an attachment-based approach that helps the couple access vulnerable emotions underlying the avoidant-pursuer cycle. The avoidant partner learns to turn towards their spouse for comfort and security.9
Conclusion
With support and effort, avoidantly attached individuals can earn “earned security” and develop the skills for lasting intimacy.10 Change happens gradually, through many small moments of staying emotionally engaged.
If you recognize yourself or your spouse in this post, consider seeking professional help. With self-awareness, compassion, and a shared vision for your marriage, it’s possible to cultivate a fulfilling, securely attached relationship.
Practical Takeaways
- Educate yourself about attachment styles and be compassionate about the origins of avoidant behavior. It stems from self-protection, not lack of love.
- Notice your thoughts and feelings when your avoidant partner withdraws. Recognize your attachment triggers to avoid taking distance personally.
- Express your needs clearly and calmly. Criticism and blame will only reinforce an avoidant stance.
- Celebrate small moments of connection and vulnerability. Express appreciation for your partner’s efforts to engage, even if they are imperfect.
- Prioritize individual growth alongside relationship work. As you each develop more secure attachment, your marriage will naturally become a safer haven.
Footnotes
- Dinh, T. (2022). The Intimacy Avoidant: An Exploration of Avoidant Attachment in Romantic Relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 39(6), 1736-1759.
- Del Giudice, M. (2021). The Evolutionary Psychology of Attachment. Annual Review of Psychology, 72, 81-106.
- Fraley, R. C. (2019). Attachment in adulthood: Recent developments, emerging debates, and future directions. Annual Review of Psychology, 70, 401-422.
- Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2018). Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change. Guilford Press.
- Fraley, R. C., & Hudson, N. W. (2017). The development of attachment styles. In J. Specht (Ed.), Personality Development Across the Lifespan (pp. 275-292). Academic Press.
- Simpson, J. A., & Rholes, W. S. (2017). Adult attachment, stress, and romantic relationships. Current Opinion in Psychology, 13, 19-24.
- Levine, A., & Heller, R. (2011). Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love. Penguin.
- Stanton, S. C., & Campbell, L. (2016). Attachment avoidance and amends-making: A case advocating the need for attempting to replicate one’s own work. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 62, 42-48.
- Johnson, S. M. (2019). Attachment theory in practice: Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) with individuals, couples, and families. Guilford Publications.
- Taylor, P., Rietzschel, J., Danquah, A., & Berry, K. (2015). Changes in attachment representations during psychological therapy. Psychotherapy Research, 25(2), 222-238.
Thank you! 🌹
Now what? My wife and I have gone through some real discoveries about ourselves after experiencing mulitple major lifes milestones simultaneously, with the loss of parents and total isolation from the world during lockdown. Which began our introspective journey to why we are who we are, and what we need to do to help ourselves as individuals and what we can do for eachothers recognitions, while maintaining a child with a mild developmental delay diagnosis for now.
My wife grew up in a houshold with two emotionally detached parents, who were both abusive, controlling, manipulative, and extream legal substance abusers, with 40+ years of legal prescriptions of Opiods, muscle relaxers, and sleeping pills, along with 2-6 alcoholic beverages per day. Her father died last year and her mother had a mental eppisode and gave $500,000 of her and her husbands retirement savings and sold her car to give it all to one total stranger she met on the internet. My wife was questioned by her mother and fathe once for eating bread off a restaurant table because they charged her parents for the bread. Her father told her she ruined the bill because she ate the bread. This was the level of value they placed on her.monitary needs. My wife also developed an eating disorder while living with her parents. So my wife realizimg just how toxic her parent were and are no longer speaks with her mother due to discovering she has been lying to us for 12 years and never told her daughter the truth. My wifes mother and father both had serios attachment issues with all their relationships and had ZERO close freinds. My wife is now distant, independant, extreamly motivated by work, and finds faults in me that are not grounded in reality. Like telling me I have a budget problem, when I have not bought shoes or clothing in 5 years, spend my money on fixing up really broken things around the house mostly for others, and do so not by buying the most expensive fix but the absolute cheapest even inventive fixes. My wife has never been in therapy, her ENTIRE family believes therapist are all quacks, and share this line when ever therapy is discussed: "why don't you visit a therapist, tell him all about my problems, and then tell what I should do."
While I grew up in a hosehold of a deceased alcoholic father (7yrs old), divorced when I was three. An adopted brother 5 years older who physically and mentally tortured me daily, NOT Brotherly love, as explaind away by my entire family whenever I told them. My brother kicked me in the back so hard and for so long I eas bed ridden for 3 days when I was 12, and my back went out on ots own without physical trauma when I was 14 leaving me on the floor incapable of getting up. I am now overly attached to my relationships learning and struggeling with how to say no, and set healthy boundries. I've been to therapy before 4 times but only found it helpful with one of my therapists.
We both recognize all this has left us trying to pick up the pieces, while building our marriage. With the vast number of frauds out there, what do we look for when trying to find a decent couples therapist who will not just assign basic explinations, while not using the precise tools (exercises) necessary to help us recognize and adapt to our childhood traumas'; bassically making things worse for us rather than better???
Are there credentials and certain personality traits we need to look for in a therapist which will help us help ourselves with these complexities? Or are we doomed trying to navigate through a vast feild of people until we find the right fit for us as individuals AND as a couple?
I would begin with a thorough assessment, Jeff. That’s the place to start. -Dr. K
My Avoidant Attachment Disorder manifests itself as intimacy anxiety which is turn causes me to suffer from severe sexual dysfunctions whenever a relationship starts getting serious. The first few sexual encounters with any given woman are usually fine performance-wise. However at some point within a few weeks of a relationship I suddenly lose all desire shutting down my ability to either ejaculate with a partner or to get and hold an erection.
For decades I thought I was simply easily bored sexually so when the dysfunctions would start I would break off the relationship and move on to another and the whole situation would repeat itself. It wasn’t until after putting off marriage until I was in my 40’s I finally wed and the sexual dysfunctions started on the wedding night and never improved making the marriage both unconsummated. My wife and I spent a few years going from Therapist to Therapist but they all insisted on treating the symptoms (The inhibited ejaculation and E.D.) putting us both through a tortuous and unpleasant series of “Homework Exercises” including Sensate Focus which was the final straw for my wife who blamed herself for my total inability to perform sexually.
In my 50’s I finally went to a Psychiatrist who suggested family trauma as a child of alcoholics was causing these anxiety related sexual problems but he was unable to take it farther than that and my marriage is still sexless 20 years later. He also mentioned I was suffering from a “Dismissive Avoidant Attachment Disorder” but at the time I had no idea what he was talking about until years later when I came across this article which, unlike anything else I have read about male sexual disorders and DAAD describes me to a “T”
“But eventually, the intimacy avoidant begins to feel alternately trapped, bored, or smothered, and then initiates a pattern of hyper-focusing on their new partner’s shortcomings and begins to systematically disengage emotionally”
For years I have been trying to find out what causes me to lose desire for a woman after one or two sexual encounters. This quote from you article caught my eye because of the word “boredom” I never felt any anticipatory anxiety or any anxiety before or during sex even when my body would suddenly shut down and I would no longer be able to perform. What I thought it was, and what I told myself it was in the 15 years I dated and after marrying was that I was simply bored sexually very easily. This explanation made perfect sense because that’s exactly how I felt- sexually bored. When this would happen I would break off the relationship and start another just to have it start all over again. But when I started researching the probable being “bored” as a cause of sexual dysfunction, especially at the beginning of a new relationship was never mentioned anywhere. Now I know what it is- some kind of subconscious anxiety that shuts me down sexually. I went to a number of Sex Therapists and anxiety was never even mentioned. Too bad This problem has made my life miserable and caused my 30 year marriage to be sexless.
“But eventually, the intimacy avoidant begins to feel alternately trapped, bored, or smothered, and then initiates a pattern of hyper-focusing on their new partner’s shortcomings and begins to systematically disengage emotionally” Wow in all the years I have been trying to find out why my relationships start out fine but then, after a few sexual encounters I suddenly lose all desire and my ability to function sexually with the women. I married in my late 30’s but dated 15 years before that and although I felt very attracted to the women I dated the relationship would only last a few weeks at most and then I would want out. My marriage has been sexually troubled from the beginning and for decades we have lived as room mates. I never knew it was all caused by anxiety until recently. Thank you for this great article.